Woman gives birth in car outside emergency room doors

Steamboat Springs  It was right about where U.S. Highway 40 meets Pine Grove Road that Suzanne Graham realized her grandson was waiting for no one.

Graham was driving her daughter, Samantha Youngs, to Yampa Valley Medical Center to give birth at about 4:30 a.m. Monday.

But the baby was already on the way.

Just 20 minutes after she went into labor, Youngs, 28, found herself sitting in the front seat of her mother's Subaru outside of the emergency room doors at YVMC, giving birth to her second child, Joseph Patrick Paul Youngs.

"She literally delivered the baby herself," Graham said.

Youngs said she was amazed the labor was so quick.

"His body came out, and my mom was banging on the (emergency room) door, then the doctors came out," Youngs said. "It all happened really, really quick."

Youngs was born at Routt Memorial Hospital, the predecessor to YVMC, and she has lived most of her life in Routt County. She was at her parents' house in Steamboat II early Monday morning when she went into labor. Youngs said the labor for her first child, Graham, was long and drawn-out.

"It was nothing like my first birth," she said about Monday's labor.

Suzanne Graham said the emergency room door was closed that early in the morning, so she knocked to get the attention of the nurses and doctors inside. They came running out, but by that time the baby already was born.

"I'll tell you what, that ER doctor and the assorted nurses, they moved pretty quickly," Suzanne Graham said.

YVMC spokeswoman Riley Polumbus said there are two sets of doors into the emergency room. The large glass sliding doors, where Suzanne Graham was knocking, is always locked except for ambulance crews.

A second set of doors for walk-in cases opens into a foyer, with a second door that is open from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. When the door is locked, patients must use a buzzer to call a worker at the registration desk. The emergency department is open 24 hours, Polumbus said.

Samantha Youngs' father, Sam Graham, took care of Graham Youngs as mother and grandmother headed to the hospital. Sam Graham said he was expecting a phone call from his daughter when it was time to come for the birth.

"They said it was too late, it was already done," he said.

Joseph Patrick Paul Youngs, son of Jeremy and Samantha Youngs, weighed 6 pounds, 13 ounces and was 19 1/2 inches long. He and his mother stayed in the hospital two days but were able to return home by mid-week, healthy and happy.

Samantha Youngs said that although this childbirth was exciting, it might be her last.